People Explain Which Things Are More Physically Painful Than Most Folks Realize

Endometriosis

"Endometriosis. I end up bleeding for two weeks straight if I miss a dose of my birth control. Last time I was bedridden for at least three days and could still barely function the next few days."

"When I had to drag my a** out of bed because my grades would drop if I missed any more class (I’m a college student), I was in so much pain, anemic, dehydrated, and nauseous..."

"But, ya know, it’s just 'cramps,' right? Get over it."

- ChipTheOcelot

Ear Infections

"Ear infections are no joke."

"I had an eardrum and canal infection in my right ear. Completely deaf for a week with a ruptured eardrum."

"I couldn't so much as touch the right side of my head without being in complete agony. I could barely talk or eat because opening my jaw was excruciatingly painful."

- izzyishot

Degenerative Disc Disease

"Degenerative Disc Disease in C4/5/6.I look completely fine and can't get disability."

"I also can't look up for longer than 30 seconds, drive for more than 15 minutes, mow my lawn, work on my jeep, or even change my brakes or oil without being laid out in pain for days afterward."

"At its worst, it causes ocular migraines that partially blind me and both arms go numb and I can't hold anything."

"The disability Judge said I was exaggerating my symptoms. F**k him. I hope he gets the same thing."

- Demonae

Depression

"Depression. When I get it bad, my bones and my skin ache. I can feel it in my teeth."

- Darfer

"Colors fade, too."

- knee_bro

Nerve Pain

"Nerve pain… Mine has come and gone at different intervals and intensities throughout the last 10 years, and I can completely understand why people go through serious depression and thoughts of suicide when they feel so helpless because nothing helps reduce the pain."

- theithe916

Not Even for the Worst Enemies

"Getting a colposcopy (cervical biopsy where they rip out a piece of your cervix to test it for cancer)."

"Getting a uterine ultrasound with contrast dye that is injected into your uterus to see if your fallopian tubes are clear (felt like someone punched your uterus from the inside)."

"Getting an intestinal blockage. Getting an intestinal blockage that results in gangrene."

"Those are the most painful things I’ve experienced and my wish for you who read this is to never experience them, especially the intestinal blockages. I wouldn’t wish any of these on my worst enemies."

- iamcrazy4cats

Everyday Pain

"I once worked a six-hour shift as a cafe manager with active appendicitis, when I showed up to the ER (after my doctor and my boyfriend demanded I do), they were astonished I’d been running around and lifting/serving for that long."

"Two years later, I was diagnosed with stage 3 endometriosis, and I had a cyst the size of a golf ball. Parts of my organs were stuck together and they’d always been dismissed as 'normal period pain.'"

"It’s amazing how much pain you can go through when everyday pain is your baseline. A good endo day for me, pre-surgery, was a three or four out of a ten-point scale. A bad one had me on the tile floor clutching a heat pack, feeling like I’d been stabbed in the front and taken a shotgun to my back."

- burntknowledge

Period Pain

"Periods."

"I'm a dude so I've never experienced them, but I've had two girlfriends, completely healthy young women, who've needed to be carried to the bathroom due to the pain."

"My boys, we lucked the f**k out on this one. Be respectful."

- Wazula23

Kidney Stones

"Kidney stones."

"Hear me out. People think passing them is what hurts and they couldn’t be more wrong. Passing them is a minor inconvenience."

"The part that hurts is when the stone is making its way to your bladder. Three- to five-hour bursts of unimaginable pain that has no way of being subdued. I was dizzy, nauseous, and walking around like Quasimodo when those bursts happened."

- PewpyDewpdyPantz

IUD Insertion

"The unexpected pain of having an IUD insertion was actually traumatizing. There’s no f**king reason they shouldn’t warn people about that beforehand."

"They said, 'Oh, it’ll just feel like period cramps.'"

"NO, you f**king id**t, I couldn’t see straight, I had an actual fight-or-flight response where I had to be held down because I was trying to get off the table and run out of the room with no f**king underwear on, I was bleeding heavily for DAYS afterward, and I had cold pain sweat all over my body."

"That s**t was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life and I cannot believe they do that procedure every day without ANY sort of anesthetic."

"I was curled up in a ball and wouldn’t let anyone touch me for like two weeks afterward."

- Pippified

Gallbladder Issues

"A gallbladder attack. I've undergone so many spinal surgeries, my family literally lost count. I know pain. I know pain very well."

"I was in such agony from my gallbladder freaking out that I had it taken out as fast as I could possibly have that done. I wasn't about to f**k around and find out."

- an_ineffable_plan

Dental Problems

"I've never been happier that dentists exist AND get paid as much as they did until I got my broken, aching wisdom tooth removed. Instant pain dissipation, and even though I was awake during the whole thing, he always made me feel comfortable and taken care of."

"When people say rotting teeth used to kill people back before modern medicine, I 100% believe it. I wanted to kill myself at a couple of points, and I didn't even have tooth decay."

- Pariah0119

An Abscess

"There’s toothache and then there’s a full-blown abscess. The kind where the side of your face is swollen. It’s not a toothache anymore. Now it’s a migraine and earache."

"The pain is always there and comes in waves of pain excruciating pain. No pain meds work. Only antibiotics will take the pain away."

- King_Baboon

Broken Ribs

"Broken ribs. Typically no outward signs to anyone that you're injured, but trust me it's painful as h**l and takes a long-a**ed time to heal."

- waywardcowboy

Migraines and Cluster Headaches

"Migraines."

"I'm not talking about bad headaches. I'm talking about the absolute h**l that is an actual blurred-vision, face-numbing, uncontrolled vomiting-inducing, skull-splitting classic migraine."

"Have you ever contemplated death over pain? A particularly nasty migraine will make you do that."

- SupertrampTrampStamp

"I get cluster headaches. There was this one medication, sumatriptan, that worked a third of the time, and you may have heard about treating them with mushrooms, but that's also a dice roll. Sometimes it's immediate release and a preventative. Sometimes it just pushes a worse one two weeks down the line."

"It's not as comprehensive as a migraine, it's a single spot in particular. There's a tiny demon on my trigeminal nerve with a tiny lava/wasp sting knife. Most of the time they don't last long. Sometimes ibuprofen and a frigid shower are enough. But at the worst, it's definitely asymptomatically approaching suicidal."

- AudiieVerbum

These conditions leave us cringing to think about, especially the ones that leave the sufferer wondering if they can make it to the other side of the pain.

The most important thing to remember is how invisible many of these conditions are, even a broken rib, and that even if you can't see what someone else is going through, doesn't mean they are struggling through it.